Problems with sudo

[dsr-mzpnVDyJpH4k7aNtvndDlA at public.gmane.org (Dan Ritter)]

On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 12:49:21PM -0500, Kevin D. Clark wrote:
> 
> Dan Ritter writes:
> 
> [in a hypothetical memo from senior_manager]
> >   Root or administrative privileges are available by default for
> >   your desktop (or laptop) systems. You must keep the existing
> >   /etc/sudoers file intact to allow sysadmin staff to assist
> >   you.
> > 
> >   No one will directly use a root or administrative privileged
> >   account on any development or production system, except for
> >   authorized sysadmin staff. Privileges may be granted via
> >   'sudo' for specific users on specific machines.
> 
> OK, I'll bite.
> 
> Let me ask a not-very-hypothetical question.  Suppose I am an engineer
> who writes code all day long.  Suppose I have a Linux development
> machine [1], provided to me by ${the_company}.  Suppose that I am a big
> fan of "Meld", the graphical diff tool.  Suppose that, in order to get
> my work done, I want to install Meld onto my development machine.
> 
> What is the right way for me to go here?
> 
> 1:  for me to install this myself.
> 
> 2:  for me to contact the sysadmin staff and have them
>     install this for me.

If it's your desktop machine or the moral equivalent thereof, you install
it yourself, preferably from the company's local repository.

If it's a development machine, you send sysadmin@ a message saying that
you'd like them to install Meld, it's in the repository, and you don't
expect this to be a production requirement (or you do, and please add
it to the deployment system along with all dependencies).

Dependencies? Why, yes. Meld has dependencies on python, python-gtk2,
python-glade, and python-gnome2. Specfic minimum versions,
too. python-gnome2, in turn, needs libbonobo2-0 and libcairo2, and will
conflict with python2.3-gnome2 and python2.4-gnome2. So sysadmin will
need to make sure that nobody else has specified a tool that absolutely
needs exactly python 2.3...

-dsr-

-- 
http://tao.merseine.nu/~dsr/eula.html is hereby incorporated by reference.
You can't defend freedom by getting rid of it.